One of the great advantages of modern telecommunications systems is the ability for users to quickly and easily send messages (e.g., e-mail, SMS, HTTP, or other types of messages) from one location to another. Typically, for instance, a user of a client station may simply open a messaging application, invoke a new-message function, and enter pertinent data such as a message-recipient, a subject line, and message text. Further, if the messaging application permits, the user may add one or more attachments to the message. Once the user has finished generating the message, the user may then invoke a message-send function, to cause the application to send the message to the designated recipient.
For various reasons, certain message recipients may impose restrictions on the messages that they receive. For instance, a message recipient may require messages to contain only a certain type, quantity or size of attachments or only a certain quantity of text. By way of example, an online photo processing service may have an e-mail address at which the service is arranged to receive photos by e-mail from customers, and the service may require that each e-mail message to that address identify the customer in the FROM field and include one to five attached photos. As another example, a company may have an e-mail address at which the company receives customer queries by e-mail, and the company may require that each such e-mail message include up to 1,000 characters of text and no attachments. Other examples are possible as well.
If a message recipient receives a message that does not comply with its requirements (such as a message that includes the wrong type of attachments, the wrong number of attachments, or the wrong length of text, for instance), the recipient may reject the message. When that happens, the recipient may notify the sender of the problem by way of a reply message. Alternatively, the recipient may disregard the message altogether. In either instance, this can be a burden for the sender. Therefore, an improvement is desired.